CHAP. LX.] PROSPECTIVE DISASTERS OF THE SOUTH. 509 not been unwise. Since the traitors Floyd, and Cobb, and Thompson have departed, he has adopted the best possible course-to stand on the defensive. His message is a greater blow to the American people than all the rants of the Georgia governor or the ordinances of the Charlestonians. He has dissipated the idea that the states which elected him are one people. The federation is not a nationality, it is only a partnership. Virginia will be gro-selling inter ests. go "Considering the probable action of the Border States, it may be expected that Virginia will guided by her ne- with the South, for the simple reason that the South will buy her negroes, and the North will not. The Gulf States know the power which, as the purchasers of slaves, they possess over the specious, but unreal neutrality of the Border States. If Virginia should take that course, the North must find a new capital. Washington will be lost. Every thing now turns on what the Border States will do; but their demands are exorbitant. Our own belief is that the ultimate settlement of the question turns on the mutual dependence of the two sections, and the essential identity of the people. The force of political cohesion will probably be too strong even for the ambition and the sectional hatred of the Charleston demagogues. Though things look so promising for them, it is evident that the secession leaders and their too willing followers are at the beginning of terrible disasters. Southern credit does not stand high either in the Union or in the world. Capital flies from a land ruled by The financial credit of the South very low. fanatical demagogues. "At a moment when the destinies of the Union are trembling in the balance, and the republic is menaced with the worst catastrophe of civil war, its Legislature is engaged upon a measure which seems calculated at once to alienate foreign nations and embitter domestic strife. The folly of the The Morrill tariff bill is an act for the estab lishment of protective duties on a most extravagant scale. It will almost prohibit all imports into the United States from England, France, and Germany. It has been said that slavery does not constitute the essence of the quarrel; that it is a blind, and that the real point of contention is the tariff. We believe that the contest for territory is the real contest between the North and the South; but it is true that free trade is the natural system of the South. It is doubtful, however, if the Southern States have clearly conceived the object of their secession. Is it the question of slavery or that of free trade? We have never read a public document so difficult to interpret as the inaugural of the anti-President. He says that divine Providence is on the side of slavery, which, probably from motives of delicacy, he never mentions by name. It is useless to disguise the fact that, whatever may be thought of Mr. Davis's rhetoric, so long as the Washington Congress adds new reating the sympathy strictions to a protective policy, it cuts itself off from the sympathy of its friends. It will not be our fault if the inopportune legislation of the North, combined with the reciprocity of wants between and modifying En- ourselves and the South, should bring about a considerable modification in our relations with America. The tendencies of trade are inexorable. It may be that the Southern population will now become our best customers. The Free States will long repent an act which brings needless discredit on the intrinsic merits of their cause." The North is alien of its friends, glish opinion. Scandalous motives It wanted no more than statements of this kind to give currency to the opinion that the manufacturof New England ing New England States, and the iron-producing state, Pennsylvania, were willing to push matters to the extremity of civil war, not for the and Pennsylvania. CHAP. LX.] DIVISION OF THE UNION INEVITABLE. The trade of the North will be transferred to the South. 511 sake of upholding the Union, but for the incurring of a vast national debt, the interest of which would insure a high tariff in perpetuity. At this time "one sixth of the population of England-four millions of persons—were depending on cotton manufactures for their daily bread, and 77 per cent. of the cotton consumed came from America. There was imminent danger that the mills would only work half-time." But let us continue our extracts. "It is our duty to point out the tendency of this retrograde commercial policy in the North. It will transfer the European trade from Boston and New York to Charleston and New Orleans. The warmest friends of the Union can not expect our merchants to celebrate its obsequies by self-immolation. But let the Free States prove themselves capable of postponing sectional interests to a truly national policy, and it will soon become evident on which side English sympathies are engaged. From the commercial point of view, we are not blind enough to suppose that we shall gain by the disintegration of the American Union into such fragments as Mexico and the South American republics. The Union completely divided. "The Union is effectually divided into two rival confederacies. The Southern is tainted by slavery," filibustering, and called into existence, it would seem, by a course of deliberate and deep-laid treason on the part of high officers of the government at Washington. In the Northern, the principles avowed are such as to command the sympathies of every free and enlightened people. But mankind will not ultimately judge by sympathies and antipathies; they will be greatly swayed by their own interests. If the Northern Confederacy evinces a determination to act in a narrow, exclusive, unsocial spirit, it will lose the sympathy and the regard of mankind. Up to this time Congress has done The blow struck by the North against English trade. nothing against the rebellion, but has struck a blow against free trade. In Birmingham, nearly £3,800,000 worth of cutlery is made worthless. Ill will against the North is every where arising. We can only wonder at the madness. Protection was quite as much a cause of the disruption as slavery. We warn the government of the United States that in attempting to exclude at one blow £20,000,000 of exports from their territory, they have undertaken a task quite beyond their power. They can not prevent English manufactures from permeating the United States from one end to the other. The smuggler will redress the errors of the statesman. Superior statesman Re "In the South we find the most convincing proofs of forethought and deliberation. The leaders ship of the South. are hurried away by no momentary impulse. There are strong evidences of a deep-laid and carefully. matured conspiracy—a perfect understanding between the chiefs of the movement and the Federal officials. union can never be expected. Men do not descend to such depths of treachery and infamy unless they are about to take a step which they believe to be irrevocable. The men who devised and directed the great plot of secession knew that they must appeal for recognition to the world without, but they thought that, as the world could not do without cotton, it could not do without them. They have lost that monopoly. The policy of the North has been equally suicidal. By enriching a few manufacturers at the expense of the whole country, they have played into the hands of the seceders. They have alienated the feelings of Europe. While the North is passing a prohibitory tariff, and speculating on balancing the loss of the cotton regions by annexing Canada, the Liberality of South- Confederates are on their good behavior. ern trade views. They are free-traders. The coasting trade CHAP. LX.] COMMON INTEREST OF ENGLAND AND THE SOUTH. 513 from Charleston. to Galveston is thrown open to the British flag, but the North interprets a coasting trade to include a voyage from New England round Cape Horn to California. It is not for us to sneer when an American community abolishes its navigation laws, declares that duties shall never be levied to foster particular branches of industry, and adopts a resolution for establishing an international copyright. But that is what the South has done. Will the South ever return to a Union in which native manufactures are, by an advantage taken of the absence of Southern representatives, defended by something like a prohibition? The South offers to the Border States a market for their slaves, and a law against the slave-trade to protect their commodity; the North requires them to contribute to New England and Pennsyl vania. The high price of manufactures and a good market for slaves will avail more than the conof England and the stitutional lectures of Mr. Lincoln in his inaugural. It is for their trade that the South are resolved to fight. They dissolved the Union to create more slave states-that is, to make more cotton. They undertook the war for the very object that we have most at heart." A common interest South. England admits the belligerent rights of the South. Before Mr. Adams, the minister accredited by Lincoln's administration to the British court, could reach his post, the British government, in accordance with a previous understanding with the French, had admitted the belligerent rights of the Southern Confederacy. It was not possible but that this measure should be regarded by the American government as unfriendly, and, considering the haste with which it was taken, as offensive. It made so profound and ineffaceable an impression that the conse |